Agents selling Safe Hands funeral plans are set to benefit from a £1 million marketing campaign designed to encourage more people to take out a funeral plan.

The firm, which was recently acquired by a private investment company, is taking ads in national press, radio and TV as well as conducting a full scale online and email campaign.

It is the first time Safe Hands has advertised on this scale and is part of a broader growth strategy which will include the recruitment of additional agents and more staff.

The sales drive follows a surge in enquiries as a result of the coronavirus outbreak which has already taken more than 32,000 lives in the UK. Google searches for the word “funeral” spiked in April with more than 74,000 searches compared with 22,000 a year ago.

Talking about death has always been a taboo subject, but research by Safe Hands shows that more people than ever are keen on discussing their end of life arrangements, with some 80% saying they would welcome a more open discussion around the subject.

Buying a pre-paid funeral plan allows people to fix the cost of their funeral at today’s prices thus avoiding the rising costs of funerals which have risen by 62% in the last decade, according to Sun Life’s Cost of Dying Report 2020.

As well as benefitting from the marketing, agents are being offered training on how to sell funeral plans and will later get access to a sales portal which will offer sales presenters, brochures and application forms.

As a result of the current social distancing measures, direct sales will be handled by Safe Hands’ new call centre operation which will provide online consultations.

Safe Hands CEO Tom Gormanly (pictured) said: “This is a golden opportunity for our agents to benefit from increased awareness of the brand and to develop their own remote selling strategies.”

The UK funerals market is worth an estimated £2 billion a year and has grown by an annual rate of 4.5% over the past five years, according to the Competitions and Markets Authority. However, only around 6% of UK adults have a pre-paid plan.